Auckland commuters making their way into the city by train faced severe disruption on Friday morning with cancellations across the network.
Southern and eastern line services between Otahuhu and Britomart,on the Western line and the Onehunga line were cancelled.
The swathe of cancellations across the city's network was caused by an outage on overhead power lines, after KiwiRail discovered overhead electrical arcing between powerlines in the Newmarket area.
KiwiRail said the problem began at 4am when the electrical arcing was discovered.
For safety reasons, power to the overhead lines had to be turned off between Penrose, Swanson and Britomart, the rail network operator said.
That meant electric commuter trains could not operate.
"Our technicians have been on site this morning and have assessed and repaired a fault. We are aiming for the power to be switched back on shortly, so that train services can resume," the statement at 8.15am said
Newmarket Station on Friday morning. Photo: RNZ / Finn Blackwell
The first trains were running again shortly before 9am, with the Papakura to Britomart at 08.36am, Britomart to Papakura (8.42am) Britomart to Swanson (8.44am) and Swanson to Britomart (9.02am).
Auckland Transport said there would be flow-on cancellations and delays all morning as a result of the "enormous disruption to our services so far."
It was "hugely disappointing and frustrating" that it was not able to operate services as usual, AT said.
Because of the short notice of the outage it had been able to arrange for only a small number of rail replacement buses.
Once power was restored and trains were up and running it would seek more detailed answers from KiwiRail about the cause of the outage and how to prevent a recurrence, AT's statemen said.
At this stage there was only one rail replacement bus for each of western and Onehunga lines.
A limited number of rail replacement buses were between Otahuhu and Britomart. Rail replacement buses on the eastern line due to KiwiRail's rail network rebuild closure were operating as normal.
Transport Minister Michael Wood acknowledged the cancellation of Auckland trains was frustrating for commuters. He said KiwiRail had identified the problem and is working quickly to resolve it.
The widespread service stoppage in Auckland followed turmoil on the Wellington network, with train services were drastically cut back due to a breakdown in a specialist track inspection machine.
Wood on Monday announced [https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/489052/ministers-order-urgent-review-of-kiwirail-after-wellington-failure
an urgent review of of KiwiRail], saying the disruption in the capital was "not good enough and follows other similar instances of service disruptions to commuters on KiwiRail's network".
National Party transport spokesperson Simeon Brown said Aucklanders wanted to see a more reliable system.
"This is devastating for commuters in Auckland, following on from what's happened in Wellington," he told Morning Report.
"This government has put $8 billion into KiwiRail over the last few years and the reality is we want to set better outcomes from or that expenditure - making sure it's more reliable."
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/489298/trains-cancelled-across-auckland-due-to-track-infrastructure-problem